Words Unspoken (51 page)

Sometimes the best thing you can do is admit that you’ve failed, and start over.

“I haven’t failed! I’ve won! Won!” He quickly put on the emergency blinkers, pulled to a stop, jumped out of the car, and hopped over a low metal railing, retrieving the paper. Back in the car, Silvano set the heavy camera on top of the stack of papers. Amazing how his heart had fluttered at the thought of losing the precious material.

He would do what he had to do! He would!

________

Lissa did not know how long she sat with her back against the front door. No tears, her mouth dry, defeated. The accusations bombarded her.

Wasn’t it enough, God, that I lost my mother? Now I’ve lost Caleb and my father and my friendship with Silvano. I don’t even know if I can trust the MacAllisters. And worse, because of me, Silvano is going to write an article and tell the whole world about S. A. Green, and that is going to kill Mr. MacAllister. He’s going to die.

The last thought halted the pity party. She jumped up and hurried back into the bedroom to check on him. He was sitting on the side of the bed and clutching his heart.

“I think I need to get to the hospital, Lissa. I’m sorry.”

Her face drained of color. “The hospital?”

He nodded. “My old heart.” He let out a breath. “You’ve got to call 9-1-1—get the ambulance.”

Lissa tried to remember what she’d read about surviving a heart attack. She ran to the office and dialed 9-1-1. When the operator came on the line, she said, “Please, send paramedics and an ambulance to 22 Sunrise Road in Fort Oglethorpe. An old man is having a heart attack!”

The emergency operator relayed the news, then came back on the line.

“What do I do? Tell me what to do,” Lissa pleaded.

“Does he have medicine?”

“Yes. I gave him nitroglycerin about ten minutes ago. I don’t think it’s working.”

“Give him another pill, and aspirin if he has it. Stay with him.”

Lissa hung up the phone and ran back to the bedroom. A glass of water and the bottle filled with nitroglycerin pills sat beside the bed. “They said to take another one of these, Mr. MacAllister,” she said, then went into the bathroom and found a bottle of aspirin. She held the glass to his mouth as he swallowed the pills and then lay down. “Oh, Mr. MacAllister, where’s Annie?”

“I’m sure she’ll be back soon,” he rasped.

“The ambulance is on the way. It’ll be here in five minutes.”

People died in five minutes.

I will not let you fail.

She was back on her knees, saying, “I’m so sorry, Mr. MacAllister. didn’t know what he was trying to do. I told him too much and he guessed the truth, and now … I don’t know what I’ll do if something happens to you.”

Mr. MacAllister reached over and covered Lissa’s hand with his own.It felt clammy. “Lissa, I’m a stubborn old man.” With that he closed his eyes and sank further down in bed. He tried to pronounce another word, but couldn’t get it out.

“Don’t talk. It’s okay. The ambulance will be here soon.”

“I … should have stopped … teaching a few years back. If something happens to me, it’s my fault. You understand, Lissa … my fault! Not yours.”

She clutched his hand, and the words came automatically. “God, I don’t know you, but Mr. MacAllister does, and he loves you and he’s spent his whole life helping kids. So please, please, don’t let him die. I don’t know what else to say. Please, God. Don’t let him die.” Then she bent over and kissed him on the forehead.

From far away, a siren screamed.

Lissa ran out of the house, feeling suddenly very alive; her mind was not on anger or failure. She was motivated by fear and something else. Love.

I love this old man. I swear I do.

The flashing lights of the ambulance came in view as the red and white vehicle approached the house. She rushed outside to meet the men in their white coats. They lifted a gurney—amazingly similar to what she’d seen on TV—out of the back of the ambulance. In a flurry of words she directed them up the porch steps and back to the bedroom. From the hall, she watched them transfer Mr. MacAllister to the gurney, guide it out the front door and down the porch steps into the back of the ambulance.

One of the medics said, “We’re taking him to Hutcheson Medical Center.”

The door slammed and the ambulance sped off, leaving Lissa standing in the driveway in a state of shock. With the squealing of the siren in the background, she heard the voice.

Your fault.

Then she heard another voice loud and clear in her mind, the voice that she had heard earlier that morning on the road, the voice of assurance, of peace, of help, a voice traveling with her along this unfamiliar road, a heartbreaking journey.

Life is not random, Lissa. It is not your fault.

________

When Katy Lynn turned into the driveway, the young girl she had practically run into earlier was sitting on the porch steps. It looked as if she was crying.

Before Katy Lynn could park the car, the girl ran over to her. “It’s your father!”

“What? What happened to my father?”

“He had a heart attack. They’ve taken him to the hospital.”

“What?”

The girl’s words tumbled out in one long breath of explanation. “Your mother and daughter and sister left. A man came to do an interview and I was upstairs sleeping and the man upset your father and when I came down, I could tell he wasn’t well and he went to lie down and took the pill—you know, nitroglycerin—and he said he’d be fine because the pill always worked. But when I checked on him a few minutes later, he was having an attack and I called 9-1-1 and they came—just about five minutes ago. They took him to Hutcheson. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know who to call, so I just waited here.”

Katy Lynn took in the barrage of news with a gulp. “How bad was he?”

“I think he was in a lot of pain, and he said the pill didn’t work, and then it all happened so fast.”

Katy Lynn ran into the house and scribbled a note to her mother, leaving it on the kitchen counter. “I’ve got to get to the hospital.”

“Can I come with you?”

“Of course.”

Katy Lynn knew the way to the hospital, just down the street. She kept glancing over at the girl in the passenger seat who looked so much like Aunt Tate.

The girl continued babbling. “It was my fault that the reporter came and started asking him questions. I didn’t mean to tell Silvano—but he was looking for S. A. Green. I guess he just pushed his way into the house and started asking questions, and by the time I got there, Mr. MacAllister was in pain… .

“But it’s like he knew what was going to happen ahead of time. He probably even expected to have a heart attack. He’s like a prophet or Jesus or something. He knows things, and he’s been there for me, both your father and your mother have been there for me… .

“I had no idea he was that famous author, but I knew he was someone important—like one of those prophets in the Bible that no one really listens to but they should have.”

Katy Lynn tried to make sense of this young woman’s running commentary. Prophet. Yes, how many times had she heard that word used about her father, sometimes as a joke and sometimes whispered with a mixture of awe and respect. A prophet no one listened to. She certainly hadn’t listened.

“He’s not a prophet—he’s just really religious.”

“Yeah. The kind of religious where you can tell it means something. Real. Your mom’s that way too. They believe what the Bible says. They believe prayer works.”

“Yep! You’ve got him figured out all right.” Katy Lynn surprised herself with her clipped tone.

“You don’t like him very much, do you?”

Katy Lynn shrugged. “Let’s just say we haven’t gotten along well for many years.”

“My dad and I aren’t getting along either. It’s horrible. We can’t talk about anything. It’s weird, though. I can talk to your father. I can tell he cares.”

He cares about everyone else.

Katy Lynn was perspiring. The wheels of her car squealed as she braked too quickly and turned onto the road leading to Hutcheson Medical Center.

He cares about me too.

“I’ve been taking driving lessons from him for about six weeks. And it’s helping. At least I think it is. Actually, my life is such a mess right now, but things he says make sense and … and I don’t know. I think eventually I’ll get better.”

The girl suddenly stopped talking. Then she wrinkled her brow and said, “By the way, my name is Lissa.

“I’m Katy Lynn. I’m glad to meet you, Lissa.” Without thinking, she added, “You look so much like my dad’s little sister, it’s uncanny.”

“I know. He told me. I think it must be hard for him to see me.”

Katy Lynn parked the car in the hospital lot.

As they hurried into the emergency room entrance, Lissa said, “I am so afraid he is going to die. I don’t know what I’ll do if your father dies.”

Katy Lynn blinked back tears.
I don’t know what I’ll do either.

________

Silvano couldn’t believe his eyes. Annie or Stella or whatever she called herself was walking out of Wendy’s with two other women—one around thirty and the other a teen.

Fantastico
! This was divine intervention. The Blessed Virgin was giving him more information for the article! Impulsively, he grabbed his camera and shot a string of pictures from the car.

The three women got into a red Buick and took off. Forget the Frosty. He was going after them!

Silvano followed at a safe distance, retracing his path back to the old house. He parked out of sight down the hill and crept out on foot. The yellow Camaro was still parked in the driveway beside the Buick, Impala and Ford. The three women were laughing as they went into the house. He’d wait a few minutes before making one last attempt to get fresh information for the article.

The front door had barely closed when it opened again, and all three came rushing out and jumped back into the car. From the expression on their faces, he knew they’d received bad news.
Something happened to the old man.

Silvano ran back to his car and pulled out behind the Buick. He trailed the car as it sped through Fort Oglethorpe and eventually turned into the emergency room entrance to Hutcheson Medical Center.

Oh, great! I sure hope the old man doesn’t die! That’s not the angle I need for this story. Not yet. I need him to be alive and well.

________

Waiting rooms made bonding places. At least Lissa felt that way. She felt buoyed up by these women. They had not condemned her, even when she tried to explain about her relationship to Silvano Rossi, even when she showed them the manuscript that she had brought with her to the hospital as proof of Silvano’s scheming.

Annie kept squeezing her hand and saying over and over, “You saved my Ev. If you hadn’t been there, he would not have had a chance.”

Not that his chances were very high right now.

Lissa observed carefully how Annie handled this crisis, par for the course of how she seemed to handle the rest of her life—with pure practicality and rock-solid faith.

“I told him over and over to retire. I think he was afraid that if he retired he would dry up, and the stories would not be there either. He needed both jobs—the one with young people and the one hidden away writing. He was like an owl coming out of his solitude in the late afternoons to teach the kids.”

Sitting in the metal-backed chairs of the emergency room, the four MacAllister women took turns explaining to Lissa about Ev and Annie’s background and why they had chosen anonymity. Exchanging stories helped pass the time as the clock ticked interminably. The doctor’s words clicked interminably also: massive heart attack, bypass surgery, critical condition.

For a few hours Lissa actually felt she belonged in this family with nononsense Annie and fragile Janelle and hurt Katy Lynn and honest Gina. For one brief evening, she was not an only child with a distant father. She had a sister and a mother and aunts. She soaked up the company of these strong yet scared women, a pieced-back-together family. Tragedy made her privy to their secrets—a little boy taken, a marriage breaking up, a confused daughter trying to find her place in the midst of divorce.

The sun set, and the wait continued. A little trash can, filled with empty paper cups that had previously held coffee, testified to the passing hours. Janelle paced back and forth, Gina tried to read some woman’s magazine, and Katy Lynn leaned against the wall and stared at the clock. Annie came from down the hall where she had inquired again at the nurses’ station.

“Nothing new yet,” she said with a shake of the head. She sat down in a metal chair and motioned for the others to do the same. Abruptly she said, “Girls, I need to tell you about a foundation that your father and I started years ago. And I need your help.”

Katy Lynn and Janelle exchanged blank looks.

“It was started in memory of Tate. Set up with the royalties from your father’s books.”

Tate. The girl I look like, the girl who died in a car wreck.

“Your father told you about developing the driving school after Tate’s death—and after his conversion. It never made much money, but it kept us young and motivated and doing what God called us to do.

“But the novels made a lot of money. We used a small percentage of the royalties for salary—never more than five or ten percent. The rest we put into a foundation. This was another of Ev’s dreams, using his royalties to help others. He called it ‘the circle of the body of Christ.’ Giving what we received in abundance to meet the needs of others so that they in turn could do the same when they had extra.

“Have you heard of the Stash Green Cash Foundation?”

Janelle gave a sharp cry. “It’s the way we stay in France—the gifts we receive from it cover almost a third of our salary. We were told it was from a donor in Chicago who wanted to remain anonymous… . But … why ‘Stash’?”

“Stash for Stella and Ashton, Green for my mother’s maiden name. The royalties go into this foundation at Goldberg, Finch and Dodge, and then once a year—on the anniversary of Tate’s death—I write a check and send the interest to Switzerland. From that account I send the money out to the various charitable organizations.”